Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are almost universally employed to provide the necessary interface between a computer system and a user to enable the user to access and control the computer system. In general, a number of possible commands are presented to a user for control of the computer system. These commands are typically presented in the form of either a ‘drop down’ menu, which lists a number of often related command options, or a series of pictorial icons, usually referred to as ‘buttons’, that represent the commands. The user typically selects the desired command by placing a displayed cursor using a cursor control device, such as a mouse or trackball, over the menu item or button and operating a selection switch on the cursor control device e.g. ‘clicking’ using a mouse button.
The number of menu options included in a drop-down menu or a set of icons is often large, particularly so for complex computer applications. Consequently, a user often experiences the problem of not knowing, or being confident of, the functions of all the displayed menu items. This problem has been addressed in the prior art in various ways. For example, a common help system in both Windows® and Macintosh® applications operates by tracking the movement of the cursor and presenting small windows, either shaped as cartoon speech bubbles or small dialog boxes, next to the menu item or icon over which the cursor passes. The presented windows contain a description of the menu item that the cursor is currently pointing at.
A disadvantage of the above type of help feature is that no allowance is made for those menu items that are not available. It is common for certain menu items to be operative only if certain other criteria relating to either the computer system itself or the state of the computer application being executed are met. Trivial examples of this include the ‘print’ menu item not being available if it is detected that no printer is connected to the computer system and the ‘copy’ function in a word processor not being available if no text has been selected. In this case the unavailable menu item or icon in question is typically shown either ‘greyed out’ (rendered in greyscale as opposed to color) or ‘dimmed’ (reduced brightness and/or contrast). In such cases when the cursor is placed over the unavailable menu item either the same help box and text appears as is the case when the menu item is available or no help facility at all is provided. In either case, no information is provided to the user that may explain why the menu item in question is not available in the first place.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,452,607 B1 discusses the provision of a user interface help feature in which an information button, referred to as a help control, is displayed next to a menu item or icon in the event that the menu item is unavailable and deemed noteworthy. On clicking on the information button a user is presented with a help dialog window that contains text describing why the menu item is not available. The text of this description is fixed and must therefore be of a sufficiently generic nature to provide help in all the possible contexts for a user wishing to select the menu item. This tends to reduce the true help value of this feature to users since the help text is non-specific to the context in which they are operating.